Initial Studies of Neutron-Rich Nuclei with Next-Generation Radioactive Beam Facilities

Abstract

Unprecedented opportunities to extend the horizons of nuclear physics towards the “terra incognita” of neutron rich nuclei await the advent of next generation radioactive nuclear beam (RNB) machines, such as the Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA) project. However, beam intensities, especially at the boundaries of accessibility, will be many orders of magnitude weaker than we are accustomed to. To overcome this obstacle and exploit the potential opportunities requires significant improvements in detectors systems and parallel improvements in our ability to extract more nuclear structure information from less data.

The discussion focuses on structural evolution far from stability in neutron rich nuclei, different experimental approaches and advances in detector systems to study these nuclei, and new ideas on the more efficient use of the sparse data to understand how structure evolves. The discussion will cover nuclei ranging from those near stability to the most neutron rich species available.